As much as I liked Nero, this one didn’t do much for me. There was probably only two things that I can say I honestly enjoyed about this book, the eyes on the man in the cover, and Lucca’s cameos. It seems the over-the-top style that I am guessing will be this new author’s trademark, while was entertaining in the first book, wore a little thin for me in this one.

The h, Lake, was almost identical to Elle in Nero. She was horrendously bullied but instead of it being from her peers, it was from her stepfather and stepsister. While Elle put up with it to protect her friend Chloe, this h let them walk all over her for pretty much no reason at all. She doesn’t tell her father (who is a low-level goon in the mob) out of some weird convoluted need to protect her mom from the consequences of leaving her kid with the evil duo to run “errands”. Why she doesn’t tell her mom? Even more idiotic.

Personally, I would have never tolerated anyone treating that way. I have had a couple of stepfathers and if they had ever tried to pull the shit that Lake’s stepfather did, that would be the last time they would have interacted with me. People will only treat you in the way you allow them to. If you go around being a doormat, expect to be walked on. It’s that simple.

This book centers around Lake and her quest to try and clean up her father’s mess. She lives with him during the week and he got in debt with the very mob that he works for. Instead of owning it like a man and fixing his own problems, Lake takes on the burden herself, and uses all of the money she has saved to go to college to bail him out on top of having to work for the mafia until the balance is paid in full.

Vincent knows Lake as his sister’s friend. He starts to catch feelings for her at a club one night when she was all dolled up and dancing on the dance floor. When he realizes the vixen he spied from across the room was her, he takes a step back and does nothing about the attraction he feels for her. It isn’t until she gets all mixed up in the mafia that he actually starts to pursue her and stake his claim, but she wasn’t having any parts of that.

She is afraid of him because he is a made man. She wants to wash her hands of all of them at her earliest convenience, but she also starts to feel the pull between the two of them as well. She becomes torn between wanting him and wanting out, the flip flopping growing tiresome after a few hundred pages.

It was a struggle to stay interested in this book. I stopped a lot, found every excuse in the world to put it down and do stuff. If it wasn’t for my buddy read partner S.G., texting me to keep reading, I probably would have DNF’d it. That would have been a shame though because I would have missed out on quite possibly the best scene in the series.

I won’t spoil it for you if you choose to read it yourself but I will give you a hint. It involves a bat. I must have reread that part four times and texted S.G. in all caps when I reached it. We shared in out mutual love for the person wielding it and it gave me the will to finish this one until the end.

The next book in the installment has no release date and the author has only stated that it will be about Chloe. Though this book was more of a chore than a pleasure read, if the next book stars Lucca…